Oilers Fall To Familiar Foes In Bizarre Rematch

Sometimes, a game just gets away from you.

Both the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers could say that about Monday's game. But the Panthers got the last laugh yet again, coming away with a 6-5 win in the first meeting between the two teams since the Stanley Cup Finals in June.

Things started going poorly for the Oilers just about immediately, despite getting an early powerplay. Evan Bouchard made an uncharacteristic blunder right off the faceoff, falling over at the blueline and giving Florida's Jesper Boqvist a shorthanded breakaway. Boqvist made no mistake, giving Florida a 1-0 lead just under three minutes into the game.

With the game tied 1-1 after a Zach Hyman goal, the Panthers struck yet again, in controversial fashion. Matthew Tkachuk continued torturing Oilers fans, redirecting the puck past Stuart Skinner with his skate on a late powerplay to give Florida the lead.

Somewhat surprisingly, the goal held up on review despite the suspicious movement of Tkachuk's skate. Whatever Oiler fans had to say about it, the first period ended 2-1.

Then things got a little wild.

The Oilers burst out of the gates in the second period, scoring three unanswered goals to take a 4-2 lead. Zach Hyman notched his second of the game, followed by Connor Brown's third goal in three games and Leon Draisaitl's league-leading 23rd.

The Oilers also had a scary moment, as Zach Hyman took a deflected Evan Bouchard slapshot directly to the face late in the second and quickly left the ice, bleeding profusely. Thankfully, Hyman was able to return for the third period, sporting a bubble and a grotesquely swollen nose.

After the Panthers added a late goal on a funny bounce off Ty Emberson, the Oilers headed into the third with a slim 4-3 lead. It wouldn't last.

First, the Oilers got too busy watching a scrum along the boards, leaving two defenders all alone in the defensive zone and allowing Niko Mikkola to tie the game. The Panthers struck again less than a minute later when Sam Reinhart took advantage of a falling Mattias Ekholm and banked a shot off Stuart Skinner's mask to give Florida a 5-4 lead and complete the comeback.

Not to be outdone, the Oilers added their own bizarre goal less than a minute after that, when a point shot somehow found its way from behind the net to the back of the net. I'm still not quite sure how it went in.

Alas, the Oilers still couldn't clean things up defensively. After a lot of sloppy back and forth, Carter Verhaeghe found the back of the net with seven minutes remaining to give Florida a 6-5 lead that they would maintain for the rest of the game.

It was... not the best night for the Oilers. The scoring was there, but their usually elite defence was a trainwreck all night, giving the Panthers way too many chances and certainly doing Stuart Skinner no favours. The end result is more disappointment at the hands of the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Player of the Game: Zach Hyman

The final tally for Hyman: two goals, one broken nose. All in a day's work for the league's hottest goal scorer.

With his two goals on Monday, Hyman now has seven in five games since returning from injury, giving him 10 on the season. Maybe it's not a coincidence that all these goals have come after he was snubbed by Team Canada following his early-season scoring slump.

Play of the Game

Hyman came *this close* to a hat trick later in the game, pulling the same move on Bobrovsky while sporting the bubble. Bobrovsky came up big that time, and Hyman will have to content himself with this beauty from the second period.

All good things must come to an end. So it goes with the Oilers' win streak, which ends at five games. Defensive lapses aside, they did score at least five goals for the third consecutive game, and gave the defending champs all they could handle in a game that went completely off the rails from the opening puck drop. If you can't win 'em all, at least give 'em a good show.

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